Keep calm and carry on....

ruby_eskimo

Well done on the progress with the LISA, that's amazing progress.  Hope you get a good surprise with the mortgage payment and that they don't end up taking way more than the original was!

South_coast

Blimey, I never considered they might take more 😮!!! I'm just hoping it'll be more than £61.90 🤣! I'll be making up the difference if it is, just means I'll be paying more in ERC's as the extra will be classed as an OP rather than the standard payment

Edited to say that the ERC would only be £5.74 - but that's still £5.74 each month further away from MF!

South_coast

I've just been screened out of a survey for not having had a sexually transmitted infection 🤣! That's even better than being declined for not being Moroccan!

greent

I got screened out for my age and the age of my children being incompatible - apparently at 50 I shouldn't have an 11yo and 15yo...... (and 20 and 23yo - but they didn't count) My 44yo sister only has the 1 and he's just 3, so am not sure what they would have made of that! 😂😂

South_coast

How rude! I wonder how old they think your children should be 🤔? When my Mum was 50 she had a 31-year-old 😮 (me!). I wonder what they would have made of that!

coldcazzie

Wow, that's rude!

South_coast

I have thrown caution to the wind and transferred the remainder of this month's petrol budget to the LISA pot. I can't see I'll be back in the office this month and I already have most of a tank, so the daily transfers were just prolonging the inevitable! The LISA pot is now full ready for transferring in April and I was left with £6 to put in the grocery budget as that was looking a little on the weedy side (mostly because I've been nicking money out of it to round up the LISA pot 🤣!) - AND £10 FOR AN OP!!! 30p of this will be nibbled away as an ERC, but I don't care!

So total paid to mortgage is now £61,414.54. Another £4,080.46 and I will have paid back what I borrowed 😳

Grogged

You rebel you! 😃
Is the £6 going to top up the fizz 🍾 pot? 😆
Great progress there and you have February and March council tax to play with as well (assuming you pay it over 10 months).

South_coast

*Takes a bow*

No fizz I'm afraid, although I will be giving the Lidl weekend deal £3.99 Malbec a whirl later 😀 

I switched my council tax to 12 months when I got the redundancy notice, it's a much more palatable figure at that amount! I've got two months off the water rates though, but have used that headroom to switch up my electricity DD for a couple of months so I'm back in the black by April when they recalculate "my year" - otherwise they'll just set it at something ridiculous. Despite having a smart meter, they tend to wildly vary the DD depending on where it is in my accounting year. They set it at the amount they think I need to pay to be at £0 by April, then say it's far too much to be back at £0 by the following April and slash it so it's far too low to then be at £0 by April 🙄 And so on, and so on....and the extremes were getting wilder and wilder. One year I paid £28 for 6 months and £7 for the following 6 months. Last year I took control and set it at £20, which probably would have been about right if I hadn't ended up spending so much more time at home. So they were asking for £31/month for 3 months to right it, instead I've gone for £43/month for 2 months and then I'll cut it back after they take February's payment 😀 

Sorry, that was a very long-winded reply! In summary, council tax no, water rates yes, but they're already spent elsewhere!

ruby_eskimo

I really don't get the energy companies either - whenever I switch to a new tariff they say I'll end up paying less overall for the year but yet my monthly DD always goes up 🤔